Broadcast and cable television have long dominated the visual media market. New communications technologies, however, have accelerated demand for new types of media such as video on demand, interactive video, interactive gaming, home shopping or interactive advertising. Unlike broadcast television, viewers of these services typically are paying “subscribers,” although payments from advertisers also pay a large share of the costs of providing these media services.
To gauge the effectiveness of their spending, advertisers have long sought information on viewers' viewing patterns. A number of devices and techniques exist for gathering such information. For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 4,258,386 to Cheung and U.S. Pat. No. 4,556,030 to Nickerson, et al., describe the general concept of deploying in viewers' homes devices for monitoring a viewer's television set (“TV”) in order to accumulate data illustrating viewing habits such as which channels were watched at particular times. Accumulated data is then forwarded via telephone lines to a central location for analysis. Cheung sends data from particular monitoring stations at a preselected, specific “window” of time; interruptions to transmission during that window result in the Cheung system forwarding the data at another time.
Other systems and methods provide somewhat more use data than just channel numbers viewed and time of viewing, Typically, however, the information is for a smaller subset of users. Thus, U.S. Pat. No. 4,816,904 to McKenna, et al., U.S. Pat. No. 4,912,552 to Allison, III, et al. and U.S. Pat. No. 5,374,951 to Welsh, all disclose monitoring “panelist” TV use in order to collect data about panelist viewing patterns as well as certain marketing information. Generally, panelist monitoring is used to gauge the effectiveness of advertising on selected groups of “panelists,” each of which is one household in a group comprising a “panel,” typically located in a particular geographical area.
Monitoring not only determines which commercial and TV programs the panelist views but also may be used to gather information about which products panelists purchase. For instance, the U.S. patent to McKenna discloses a remote data collection unit located at a panelist home that monitors viewer identification data and TV functions (e.g., channel viewed, VCR viewing time or game time). Additionally, a wand is provided for inputting bar codes of purchased items. Monitored data is sent via the telephone network to a central location, which can also download questionnaires to the panelist and receive responses. Allison and Welsh disclose similar monitoring systems and methods. Instead of simply monitoring the channel number that a panelist was viewing at a particular time, Welsh discloses monitoring identification information carried in the television signal vertical blanking interval that identifies preselected commercials. After detecting and storing the identification information that identifies particular commercials viewed by panelists, the data is transmitted by telephone to a central location for analysis.
Monitoring systems also have been used with some early interactive media systems. U.S. Pat. No. 5,404,393 to Remillard discloses an interactive TV system. Among other elements of the system, a controller monitors TV channels and time/date stamps the selected channel so that, indirectly, viewers' programming choices may be monitored. Data is assembled into a “user profile,” which is uploaded to an appropriate facility via the telephone network.
Nevertheless, while panelist monitoring systems like those of Allison, McKenna and Welsh or interactive television monitoring systems like Remillard's provide somewhat more monitoring data than just TV tuning data, they do so only for limited groups. For example, when more data is gathered (like purchase information), it is done only for the panelist groups, rather than for subscribers to the entire system. Also, systems like McKenna's that uses a wand for scanning bar codes are intrusive systems that require user action to collect data rather than collecting data passively and automatically. Other systems contemplate capturing only some of the data generated by subscriber's viewing activities or only some of the ratings information. For instance, previous systems typically capture ratings information that identify television shows viewed rather than whether the subscriber viewed commercials displayed during those shows.
Perhaps more importantly, none of the systems described attempt to match “raw” information on channels viewed with programming information. Nor do those systems match viewing pattern information with demographics information about the particular users in order to provide more “targeted” advertising.